1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a technology for providing an apparatus, a method and a computer program product for translating speeches, and a terminal apparatus for outputting translated speeches.
2. Description of the Related Art
With advanced information technology, electronic conference systems have been widely used to communicate with a plurality of participants in a conference, a meeting, and the like. The electronic conference systems include a video conference system that provides speeches and images of the participants as well as a telephone conference system that conveys speeches of the participants.
If the participants use different languages, a speech translation technology that recognizes and translates a speech is used to share a speech of each participant with others.
However, when the speech translation technology is applied to the video conference system, an image and a translated speech of a speaker are not output in synchronization because it takes a certain time to process the speech.
JP-A 2001-224002 (KOKAI) discloses a technology that translates speech signals, performs time-scale compression/decompression on image signals received with the speech signals so that a duration of the image signals is equal to a duration of a synthesized speech after translation, and outputs the processed image signals and the synthesized speech at the same time.
The technology disclosed in JP-A 2001-224002 (KOKAI) eliminates a time lag between the translated speech and the moving image; however, it does not eliminate the time lag among the translated speech and the moving image output for the participants in the teleconference. In other words, if a speech is translated into a plurality of target languages, the translated speeches can be output at different timings depending on the target language because the process of the translation and the output order of the translated words vary.
Moreover, participants that use the same language as the speaker hear the speech in real time and others have to wait for the speech until it is translated. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult for the participants that listen to the translated speech to keep up with the conference.